It was the last day of our England mission trip. We traveled to London to have one day of sight-seeing before our trip back to Texas. And our day in London was lots of fun! We got lost trying to find Buckingham Palace, saw Big Ben, and explored the Westminster Abbey.
That night, five girls and I wanted to see Wicked on the West End (England’s equivalent to Broadway). We ate dinner with a group of people who were going to see Les Mis and then branched off to go to our theater.
We took the tube (or subway) to the theater since it was still daylight. But when the musical ended and we came out of the theater, it was dark outside. We were in London two days after the big Manchester shooting that happened last year, so we were nervous to ride the tube after dark.
So we decided to take a double-decker bus back to our hotel. The tube ride from our hotel to the theater took about ten minutes. We knew the ride on the bus would take longer, but we thought it would be exciting to see the London city lights at night.
We looked for the correct numbered bus that would return us to the hotel and then got on.
Once on the bus, we went up to the top deck, sat down, and peered out the window. Bright and happy city lights drifted past us as we chatted about the musical and our favorite parts of the trip. The bus screeched to a stop at station after station, but it never came to our own.
After 20 minutes or so, it dawned on us that we should have been back at our hotel by now. Someone pulled out their folded-up map of the tube system and we compared that to the bus stops we were making. We realized the bus was heading away from our hotel instead of towards it.
“The bus will probably loop back around once it gets to the end of the route,” one person suggested.
“We’re safe so long as we stay on.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to get off and try to find another bus. It’s late now.”
Only one of us had a data plan in England, so she texted other Texans to let them know we were on a bus headed back to the hotel, but it would probably be a while.
Then we kept gazing at the city lights and chatting while the bus continued to make stop after stop.
The bus kept driving away from the heart of the city. The lights grew dim and sparse. We were approaching the outskirts of London, and it did not look nearly as happy as the city did at night.
The bus pulled up to a stop and the driver said over the speaker, “This is our last stop for the night, so everyone must get off.”
We stared at each other, wide-eyed. This was not a safe part of London. We scampered down the stairs to the bottom deck and asked the driver how we would get back to a stop by the Marble Arch, which was next to our hotel. He told us to look for a bus with the numbers ____ or ____ on them and to take a bus going in the opposite direction.
We disembarked the bus and it pulled away, taking our feeling of security with it.
A single street lamp illuminated the street. We stood there and shivered.
Heart pounding, I linked arms with a friend. We all took a deep breath and then crossed to the other side of the dirty street. Someone started praying aloud as we sped walked to the next bus stop.
We passed men smoking cigarets, leaning against the cold metal gates in front of drugstores. I tried to ignore the fact that we were six American, nicely-dressed, rich-looking girls. God, help!
We made it to the bus stop and immedietly checked to see if it had the correct bus numbers listed. It did.
Thank goodness!
We waited for what seemed like an eternity for the bus to come. Hours seemed to pass. I kept nervously glancing around the street, worried that someone might approach us.
When the bus arrived, we climbed on and asked the driver if he was heading towards the Marble Arch, just to be safe.
He nodded and we breathed a sigh of relief.
We plopped down in the first row of seats on the bottom and silently stared out the window, waiting for the bright city lights to return.
The bus drove up the unending street, into the heart of London.
An hour and a half (or so) after the musical ended, the bus finally stopped at the Marble Arch stop and we lept from the metal beast. We practically ran to our hotel, so excited to be back to safety.
Are you on a “bus” that is heading in the wrong direction that you need to disembark?
I think we can all agree that there is something negative in our lives that we would be better off without.
The “bus” could be a bad relationship or a negative friendship. Or it could be a bus that’s more sneaky, one you don’t even realize you’re on, such as not reading your Bible consistently or even hitting snooze too many times in the morning.
It would have been so much easier if my friends and I had simply gotten off the bus the second we realized it was heading in the wrong direction. But we didn’t. We rationalized and thought everything would be okay in the end… but when the end came we were in much deeper trouble than before.
Same can happen figuratively in life. We build negative habits and don’t want to quit even if we know the habit is bad. Or we find ourselves in a bad relationship or friendship but don’t want to leave even though we have a sinking feeling that it’s not going to end well.
Today, I want to challenge you to identify the negative buses you have in your life and then find a way to get off the bus ASAP.
In England, my friends and I might have been inconvenienced to get off the bus the second we found out we were going the wrong way. It might have been hard or scary even to walk down a well-lit crowded London street at night. But considering the alternative- walking down a completely sketchy London street at night- the crowded street doesn’t seem so bad.
It could have been hard for us to admit we were wrong in choosing this bus. We felt safe on the bus headed in the wrong way because it was comfortable.
Thankfully nothing terrible happened as a result of us getting on the wrong bus. However, in other aspects of life, we may not be as lucky.
Don’t choose what’s comfortable over what you know is right.
Get off the bus before it drops you off at a street corner you have no business being on.
